People in Europe [America] clearly know what Socrates claimed not to know, and what that famous old snake once promised to teach, – people these days “know” what is good and evil. Now it must sound harsh and strike the ear quite badly when we keep insisting on the following point: what it is…
How much or how little danger there is to the community or to equality in an opinion, in a condition or affect, in a will, in a talent, this is now the moral perspective: and fear is once again the mother of morality. When the highest and strongest drives erupt in passion, driving…
For as long as there have been people, there have been herds of people as well (racial groups, communities, tribes, folk, states, churches), and a very large number of people who obey compared to relatively few who command. So, considering the fact that humanity has been the best and most long-standing breeding ground for…
No mother doubts at the bottom of her heart that, in the child, she has given birth to a piece of property; no father questions his right to subject the child to his own ideas and valuations. In fact, there was a time (among the ancient Germans, for instance) when it seemed fair that…
…the oldest and most secret processes ofall “knowledge and cognition”:there as here,rash hypotheses, fictions,the dumb good will to “believe,”and a lack of mistrust and patience develop first– our senses learn late and never fully learnto be refined, trusty, careful organs of knowledge. Given some stimulus,our eyesfind it more convenientto reproduce an imagethat they have…
The question of whether, with respect to the value of things, the instincts deserve more authority than reason (reason wants some ground or “what for?”, some purpose or utility behind our values and actions) – this is the same old moral problem that first emerged in the person of Socrates and divided opinions long…
The old theological problem of “faith” and “knowledge” – or, to be more precise, of instinct and reason – and so, the question of whether, with respect to the value of things, the instincts deserve more authority than reason (reason wants some ground or “what for?”, some purpose or utility behind our values and…
July 4th, Independence Day 2024 arrives. It is overcast. The roads were eerily quiet, no traffic. I nodded to instinct and pressed the accelerator, the car surged to 70 mph in three seconds or so. That was enough. The published speed limit was 40 mph. What is life but to exceed a limit? Karl…
We Are In Charge Dance on this verge, do not let the ruling fools of this dying world consummate their curses. Rise up, defy, resist! Uncork the sacred rage! Be and become the new culture of euphoric duty, and insurrectionary beauty. Join the new alliance! Needed: radical curiosity, reverent pranks, voracious listening….
But the strange fact is that everything there is, or was, of freedom, subtlety, boldness, dance, or masterly assurance on earth, whether in thinking itself, or in ruling, or in speaking and persuading, in artistic just as in ethical practices, has only developed by virtue of the “tyranny of such arbitrary laws.” And, in…
